More than 90 per cent of parents want more control over their sprog's texting habits, and would buy more phones if they had it.
Messaging company Acision spoke to 1000 mobile phone users and established that parents would be happy to equip their ankle-biters with mobile phones at an even younger age, if only they had more …

Here's a more effective method of parental control:

don't give your child a mobile phone in the first place. 2 children in my 8 year old daughters class have already got mobile phones- so the rest of the kids are putting their parents under pressure to get them one too- The way we parents have reacted is to put pressure on the parents of the 2 phone owning children to remove the mobiles from them and to agree a minimal age whereby it should be allowable for a child to have one.

More worryingly...

How about...

Don't give them one...

My offspring can have one when they can afford to pay for the damn thing themselves. I refuse to believe that the big wide world is any more significantly dangerous than when I was growing up, and bleating Daily Mail readers telling me to "think of the children" can quite literally stick it.

I'll protect my kids through good parenting, not by throwing money at them dag-nammit!

don't give them a phone

Why blacklisting?

I don't see why mobiles can't have a whitelisting system. (Think Facebook if you want a noomeeja comparison) Not just for kids - personally I'd quite like to only allow known friends to be able to call me, and known businesses during specified hours.

I pay for it...

If I pay for the phone then I would like the ability to easily block who I want. If my children hate the block then they can pay for the monthly fee themselves. 15-16 year old's don't always make the best decisions even if they know better.

Welcome feature..

To be honest, a while ago I received a number of spam texts from a seemingly random mobile number. I'm not talking 3 or 4, I mean some joker thought it would be a good idea to spam me with a good 4-500 text messages in a day. I called up O2 and filed an 'abuse report', but no matter what I asked they simply refused to block the number.

When I pay these people £35 a month I expect to be able to block a phone number on request. Luckily now I'm with orange and the HTC Hero offers the ability to block stuff.

Don't forget

Phones aren't just phones anymore, they're mobile computers. Play MP3s, update Facebook and play games. An 8 year old might not have anyone they can call, but they'll happily stare at a computer generated screen for their entire waking lives if allowed to (broken only by adult delivered refreshments, toilet breaks and demands that they're not tired yet).

Disclaimer: not a parent but will happily have an opinion on everything.

My 14 year old niece has a phone. At school if it's found to be on it's taken away until the end of school day, that seems a reasonable compromise, and maybe (unpopular anti privacy stance here), maybe the bill payer should have access to the phones log, phone calls, texts and online times recorded. Best way for parents to find out their little darlings are being bullied (and vice versa).

@ Gaz Davidson

Not for parents alone, not dependant on device

The Disney tool was an app people needed to download. In this case Acision enables subscribers to black people from spamming/bullying/stalking you. Depending to what extend the operator likes to enable this. Users can block others through a website (alike O2's bluebook), by sending an SMS, by visiting a mobile website (and typing in the number) or even by downloading an operator SMS/MMS client that offers additional features such as forwarding to email, block,, auto-reply... Even when the phone is than out of reach, battery is empty, etc The rules still apply.

for parents the copy feature could be interesting if a parent suspects their teens are being bullied but they have not real sign for this going on. Of course it is up to parent and kid who will setup and control these features.